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The Tigray and Eritrean Peoples Liberation

Fronts: a History of Tensions and Pragmatism

John Young

The Journal of Modern African Studies / Volume 34 / Issue 01 / March 1996, pp 105 - 120
DOI: 10.1017/S0022278X00055221, Published online: 11 November 2008

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/

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How to cite this article:

John Young (1996). The Tigray and Eritrean Peoples Liberation Fronts: a
History of Tensions and Pragmatism. The Journal of Modern African Studies,
34, pp 105-120 doi:10.1017/S0022278X00055221

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The Journal of Modern African Studies, 34, 1 (1996), pp. 105-120
Copyright © 1996 Cambridge University Press

The Tigray and Eritrean Peoples

Liberation Fronts: a History of
Tensions and Pragmatism
byJOHN YOUNG*

T H E Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF), and by extension

the Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), the
multi-ethnic coalition that it established and still dominates, is
frequently considered to be a creation of, and beholden to, the Eritrean
Peoples Liberation Front (EPLF). From this perspective the foreign
loyalties of the TPLF made it an unsuitable, if not illegitimate,
movement to lead the Transitional Government of Ethiopia (TGE) in
1991, and since 1995, the newly created Federal Democratic Republic.
By way of contrast, this article attempts to demonstrate that the
developing relationship between the TPLF and the EPLF during the
course of their respective revolutionary struggles has been far more
problematic and beset with tensions than critics are either aware of, or
acknowledge, and that an understanding of their nature casts light on
present and possible future differences between the respective regimes
of Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Like a host of movements that emerged in the wake of the collapse
of Emperor Haile Selassie's regime in 1974, the TPLF looked to
experienced Eritreans for inspiration, and later received assistance
upon recognising their right to independence. However, as the TPLF's
basis of support and military skills grew in the 1970s and early 1980s,
the Tigrayans developed their own distinctive policies and conceptions
of revolutionary struggle. These differences not only served to define
and distinguish the TPLF from the EPLF, but were also the cause of
increasing tensions and their break in relations in 1985.1 Although
pragmatism and the prospect of victory over Ethiopia's Derg led to
reconciliation in 1988, important divisions continued until Mengistu

* Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Addis

Ababa University, Ethiopia.
1
See John Young, 'Peasants and Revolution in Ethiopia: Tigray, 1974-1989', Ph.D.
dissertation, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, September 1994. Funding for
this research was received from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
during 1992-4.

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106 JOHN YOUNG

Haile Mariam was overthrown in May 1991, some of which remain

as the source of misunderstandings and disagreements despite many
areas of agreement.

TIGRAY S MILITARY RELATIONS WITH THE

ERITREAN FRONTS

Contacts between the Tigrayan and Eritrean liberation movements

developed prior to the TPLF launching its armed struggle in February
1975. Tigrayans living in Eritrea, particularly students at the
University of Asmara, endeavoured to obtain promises of assistance
from the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), and especially the EPLF,
many of whose leaders shared the same language, while some were also
former members of the university student movement.2 Ultimately,
however, EPLF support for the TPLF depended upon acceptance of
the view that Eritrea was a colony, and hence had a right to secede
from Ethiopia. Thereafter, the TPLF sent several of its members,
including a future EPRDF Minister of Defence, Seye Abraha, to the
EPLF for military training, and when 19 fighters returned three
months later, their expertise proved crucial to the fledgling Tigrayan
movement.
Meanwhile, the ELF's emphasis on conducting cross-border raids
on Derg bases in Tigray provided the TPLF with the opportunity of
gaining valuable combat experience, and as a result these two Fronts
established close military relations.3 They were joined by the EPLF
when the Derg attempted in 1976 to crush the Eritrean insurrection by
raising an ill-trained and poorly equipped Ethiopian army of some
60,000 peasants - the so-called 'Raza Project'. What ensued was a
massacre on the Tigrayan border, and the few soldiers who entered
Eritrea were quickly killed or captured.
Such unity did not last long, however, and the ELF's wide field of
operations in Tigray became a principal cause of the complete break in
relations with the TPLF. The ELF's territorial interpretation of Eritrea
went beyond the Italian defined colonial boundaries to include parts
of north-western Tigray, a concept that the TPLF could not accept.
In addition, the ELF's alliances with the nobility-led Ethiopian
Democratic Union (EDU) and the pro-Marxist Ethiopian Peoples
Revolutionary Party (EPRP), which the TPLF was challenging for

2
Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF), Woyeen, 21 February 1979.
3
See, for example, TPLF, Revolt, First Year (1975?), 7, p. 29, and 8, p. 26.

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 THE TIGRAY AND ERITREAN FRONTS I07

supremacy of the a.nti-Derg opposition in Tigray, became the source of

growing tensions. Moreover the TPLF found that it was unable to
maintain ties with two organisations engaged in an acrimonious
struggle for an Eritrea-wide hegemony. Given the language and
cultural links that bound the membership of the TPLF and the EPLF,
and the latter's stronger Marxist credentials than those of the Islamic-
oriented ELF, the TPLF not surprisingly gravitated to the EPLF, and
in the late 1970s joined in what proved to be a successful campaign to
remove the ELF from the central highlands of Eritrea and Tigray.
The leaders of the TPLF had seen from the beginning that the
survival of their movement depended upon the success of the Eritrean
insurrection. The TPLF's defeat of the EDU and the EPRP in Tigray
in 1978 allowed it to devote resources to directly challenging the Derg,
notably by attacking Ethiopia's supply lines to Eritrea. By 1980 an
even more powerful TPLF had forced the Derg to rely increasingly on
air and sea transport to supply its Eritrean garrisoned troops, and for
this valued assistance was supplied by the EPLF with technical skills,
advanced weaponry, and military training.
The TPLF's highly successful peasant mobilisation in the early 1980s
brought ever larger numbers of recruits, some 3,000 of whom were sent
to the EPLF's Sahel base for military training. When news leaked
about the Derg'% counter-insurgency plans against Eritrea, the TPLF
agreed to the EPLF's request that these Tigrayan recruits be used in
the base's defence. The fact that they may have constituted one-half of
the TPLF's non-militia forces at the time speaks strongly about the
significance attached to the Eritrean Front's survival.4 And indeed, the
ensuing failure of the Derg's 'Red Star' campaign of 1982 probably
ended any prospects that the Ethiopian regime had of defeating the
EPLF and the TPLF.
The growing importance of the TPLF to the anti-Derg struggle
increased its confidence and meant that the benefits of its relationship
with the EPLF were clearly mutually advantageous. Attacks on
Ethiopia's convoy traffic to Eritrea were having an important impact
on the war in the north, and as the TPLF grew in strength the Derg was
forced to devote ever larger numbers of troops to the defence of Tigray
that could have been assigned to Eritrea. Although the TPLF continued
to need the specialised skills of the EPLF, its participation in the
protection of the latter's Sahel base marked a coming of age, and gave
4
According to the Mew Statesmen (London), 28 May 1982, p. 15, as many as 4,000 TPLF
fighters were sent to the Eritrean Peoples Liberation Front (EPLF), but my informants believe this
figure to be too high.

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IO8 JOHN YOUNG

it the confidence to begin challenging the EPLF on a range of military

and political issues.
TPLF strategists argued that the EPLF had opted for conventional
warfare too early and at too great a cost, and hence they pursued a
mobile style of fighting, that did not involve holding territory, until the
expulsion of the Derg from Tigray in 1989. The TPLF's original base
in western Tigray was in fact evacuated on three or four occasions when
attacked by superior forces.5 Even after the 1988 capture of all the
Tigrayan towns north and west of the provincial capital Mekelle, the
TPLF did not hesitate to retreat a few months later when the Derg went
on the offensive. In none of these cases was the TPLF prepared to
accept the loss of large numbers offightersand civilians to defend areas
that it was convinced could be taken at a time of its own choosing.
Although TPLF leaders are reluctant to publicly criticise the EPLF's
1982-3 defence of its liberated territories, a group of their fighters in
western Tigray later told Dieter Beisel, a German journalist, that the
EPLF had made a mistake by being drawn into a war of heavy
armaments from fixed positions, with the result that it was pushed back
to the Sahel and had little support in other areas of Eritrea. They
contended, in contrast:
We don't want to distance ourselves from the general population for whom we
are fighting. We aren't an army but a liberation movement and our people
have to be convinced that we are operating on their behalf. The mutual trust
and confidence that we now enjoy would be lost if we turned Tigray into a site
to carry out large scale heavy armament fighting.8
From 1980 onwards, the EPLF had fought a conventional war from
secure bases against the Derg's larger and more technologically
dependent army, from which most of their weapons had been acquired.
For the Eritreans this demonstrated their military superiority over the
struggle engaged in by the Tigrayans, who in turn saw this devotion to
conventional warfare as indicative of the ascendancy of a professional
military establishment within the EPLF, a development which
threatened to weaken the democratic character of the war.
From 1985 to 1988 the TPLF army was extensively reorganised, its
capacity extended, and the notion of a protracted people's war
deepened. With increasingly strong forces and the augmentation of
armoured units, the TPLF moved away from the small guerrilla
engagements of the past to destroying much larger forces within Tigray
5
Interview with Tsegaye Berhe, TPLF vice-chairman, Tigray region, Mekelle, 11 April 1993.
6
Dieter Beisel, Reise ins Land der Rebellen: Tigray-eine afrikanische Zvkunjt (Reinbek bei
Hamburg, 1989), p. 59.

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 THE TIGRAY AND ERITREAN FRONTS

and beyond. As a result, the EPLF's dependence upon its army and its
conviction that the Derg could be defeated in the Sahel was decisively
rejected. This approach was condemned as relegating the people to the
status of mere ' spectators', while the TPLF military doctrine recognised
the value of their initiatives.7
The guerrilla fighters of the ELF had been trained in Syria, China,
and by Cubans in South Yemen.8 After the collapse of Haile Selassie's
regime in 1974, a number of Eritrean officers from the imperial army
joined the EPLF - as did others later from the ELF - which meant that
its military leaders inherited a tradition of professionalism. As a result,
they emphasised training and relied on technology, an approach
expedited by the EPLF's access to skilled and educated recruits. By way
of contrast, the TPLF's strategy and techniques were acquired through
personal study and practical experience in the countryside.9 Training
methods were not sophisticated, albeit consistent with the Tigrayan
emphasis on self-sufficiency. While those with skills in warfare assumed
key positions in the army, there was never any marked division between
them and their political leaders. It is thus significant that none of the
TPLF's top three surviving military officers, Siye Abraha (Seye),
Mohammed Yanous (Samora), and Hadish Araya (Hayloum), had
either a previous army background or even went abroad for training.
Although it was the EPLF that first introduced the means whereby
the rank-and-file could voice their grievances, my informants suggest
that criticisms were far more likely to be horizontally than hierar-
chically directed. Within the TPLF, however, there seem to have been
genuine opportunities for questioning policies and their implemen-
tation. This emphasis on popular participation and consultation may
well at times have slowed military progress, but it also ensured that the
TPLF did not usually get' too far ahead' of the thinking of its members.
The extent to which they could challenge their leadership was
graphically illustrated in 1989, when those fighting under the banner
of the EPRDF outside of Tigray began deserting the battlefield and
returning home. War-weary, they complained that their objective had
been achieved with the liberation of Tigray, and that it was up to the
other peoples of Ethiopia to free their own territories, a view that had
widespread support in Tigray.
These TPLF fighters were not punished for desertion, but allowed to

7
Interview with Gebru Asrat and Abey Tsheye, Addis Ababa, 9 January 1996.
8
Peter Andreas, 'Politics and Liberation: the Eritrean struggle, 1961-86', Ph.D. dissertation,
University of Aarhus, Denmark, 1987, p. 67.
9
Interview with Yemane Kidane, Ministry of Defence, Addis Ababa, 1 December 1992.

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I 10 JOHN YOUNG

return to their home villages and receive their land entitlements.10 In

response to what had happened, the TPLF organised a Tigray-wide
debate, which eventually led to the acceptance of the need to continue
the war until the complete defeat of the Derg in Ethiopia. Some EPLF
members interviewed have cited this case as evidence of peasant
narrow-mindedness, as well as being indicative of the TPLF's political
weakness. They argue that it was not lack of democracy that precluded
such a debate in Eritrea, but that their fighters were better educated
and understood the merits of taking the war south. Although there may
be much truth in this assessment, there is little evidence to support the
view that the EPLF leadership would have allowed such a challenge to
its authority by the rank-and-file.
The EPLF's greater emphasis on its army's professionalism and
devotion to conventional warfare meant that it relied less on local
military support. While TPLF fighters moved widely and frequently to
link up with peasant militias against Derg positions, the Eritreans
increasingly depended more on carefully planned 'push' movements
that advanced from fixed defended positions to attack the enemy and
then retreat. A former Derg officer with extensive experience of fighting
against both the TPLF and the EPLF attributed these differences in
tactics as being due to the closer relations that the former enjoyed with
its peasant supporters.11 The EPLF's reliance on a largely conventional
army meant that it did not have the same degree of mobility. The
relative strength of the local militias in both Fronts is indicated by
the fact that the EPLF was able to quickly disband them in Eritrea
after capturing power in 1991, while in Tigray the TPLF regional
administration in early 1996 was still attempting to replace the popular
local militias.
Differences were also apparent in the approach taken by the two
Fronts to recruitment. While the large majority of EPLF fighters were
clearly drawn to this liberation movement on a voluntary basis, young
peasants from Eritrean villages would sometimes be selected and taken
away at gun-point for military training. I can confirm on the basis of
my 1986 to 1989 residence in the Sudan, temporary home to half a
million Eritrean refugees, that some did occasionally report that as
well as fleeing from the Derg, they also left to avoid being forcefully
conscripted into the EPLF. The leaders of the TPLF for their part

10
Interview with Father Keven Mahoney, Adigrat Catholic Seminary, 4 March 1993.
11
Interview with Colonel Asaminew Bedane, POW camp, Western Tigray, 5 May 1988. He
found the EPLF's strategy and tactics to be superior to those of the TPLF, but the latter more
terrifying in combat because of its ability to launch surprise attacks and the courage of its fighters.

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 THE TIGRAY AND ERITREAN FRONTS III
claim that they never resorted to such means of recruitment, and my
research provides no evidence to the contrary.
In addition, there were marked disparities in the treatment of
prisoners of war. Under the EPLF, they participated in productive
activities, such as construction and agriculture, but although sometimes
released as a gesture of goodwill or because their sustenance and/or
safety could no longer be assured, most POWs were kept in captivity for
many years. The rationale for this practice was twofold. First of all,
since the prisoners were regularly moved around in the liberated
territories, their knowledge was deemed to pose a security risk to the
EPLF. Secondly, the Eritreans wanted to return POWs through the
auspices of the International Commission of the Red Cross, a process
which would provide them with some protection, as well as forcing the
Derg to acknowledge officially and publicly the capture of its soldiers to
the obvious political benefit of the EPLF. 12
Although POWs held by the TPLF in the early years of the war were
sent to EPLF camps in Eritrea, the Tigrayans later adopted a very
different approach. Their prisoners were also sometimes moved from
one area to another, since the Derg was known to target them in
bombing raids, but POWs were neither used as conscripted labourers
nor considered to be a security risk. Indeed, the practice was to keep
prisoners from four to eight months, during which time they were
exposed to TPLF propaganda and then given the choice of going to the
Sudan as refugees, returning to their home villages, or, increasingly in
the final phases of the war, joining the TPLF or one of the EPRDF
components. Derg officers were treated in the same fashion as conscripts,
and only officials of the Workers Party of Ethiopia were segregated in
the prison camps and held for longer periods.13
The early release of prisoners by the TPLF was to some extent a
response to the scarce human and material resources consumed in
keeping them securely guarded for extensive periods. However, there
were clear political and military advantages if those who returned
home reported to their fellow villagers that they had been well treated
- thus undermining Derg propaganda that portrayed the TPLF as a
shifta or bandit organisation — thereby making the Front's eventual
move south into non-Tigrayan lands more acceptable to the local
population. Moreover, were such prisoners to be conscripted again, the

12
EPLF, Adulis, i, 9, March 1985, p. 7. See also, Alex de Waal, Evil Days: 30 years of war and
famine in Ethiopia (New York, Human Rights Watch, 1991), p. 311.
13
Information based on my visit in May 1988 to the POW camp in western Tigray, where
some 4,000 Derg soldiers were being held by the TPLF.

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112 JOHN YOUNG

Derg could not be assured of their loyalty or reliability since they might
well throw down their weapons and surrender at the first opportunity
when next confronting the TPLF on the battlefield, as I personally
witnessed on several occasions.
There is almost certainly another factor that must figure in any
explanation of the differing attitudes to POWs. The EPLF was engaged
in a struggle for independence and took the view that Derg soldiers were
illegal and foreign occupiers of Eritrean sovereign territory, whereas
the TPLF looked upon them as forcefully conscripted peasants and
fellow Ethiopians. In other words, the situation in Tigray made it easier
to adopt a more humane approach to the captives than in Eritrea,
where militant nationalism coloured all contacts with Ethiopians. Even
so, Alex de Waal's conclusion that prisoners held by both the EPLF
and TPLF were well treated is correct,14 not to say remarkable in view
of the terror tactics employed by the Derg's army in Tigray and Eritrea.

POLITICAL TIES AND DISPUTES

According to the Eritrean Peoples Liberation Front, its relationship
with the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front 'was based on the EPLF's
recognition of the rights of the oppressed nationalities of Ethiopia and
on the TPLF's recognition of the just right of the Eritrean people for
self-determination'.15 The fledgling TPLF certainly welcomed outside
support, and in the wake of massive Soviet backing for the Derg, both
of the Eritrean Fronts recognised that their success depended on
working closely with other armed opposition forces in Ethiopia,16
notably the Tigrayans. But that did not mean that the TPLF and
EPLF were always in agreement on ideological matters.
A major area of contention was over the TPLF's categorical claim,
re-emphasised in 1986, that the right to independence proclaimed for
Tigrayans and other Ethiopian nationalities also applied to the peoples
of Eritrea: ' If the future Eritrea is to be truly democratic, it will have
to respect the right of nations and nationalities to self-determination up
to, and including, secession. ' 17 Indeed, to rule out the possibility of such
a step 'would amount to contradicting' the EPLF's 'own democratic
principles'. 18 Unlike Tigray with its largely ethnically homogeneous

14
De Waal, op. cit. p. 309.
15
'EPLF Political Report and NDP', adopted at the Second and Unity Congress of the EPLF
16
and the ELF—Central Leadership, 16 March 1987, p. 152. Andreas, op. cit. p. 93.
17
'On Our Differences with the EPLF', in People's Voice, Special Issue, 1986, p. 7.
18
'A Great Leap Forward', in ibid. p. 6.

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 THE TIGRAY AND ERITREAN FRONTS I I3

population, Eritrea possessed as many as nine different 'nationalities',

and faced with the task of creating a united revolution the EPLF was
understandably reticent about taking on board the TPLF's interpret-
ation of their 'right' to secede. The EPLF claimed that although
Ethiopian nationalities had the right to self-determination, the right to
independence was conditional on first, the nationalities previously
being independent, and second, on their being economically cohesive:
once a progressive state is set up in Ethiopia and the system of national
domination and oppression gives way to one based on the equal rights of all
nationalities, there would be no historical, economic or other factors that
would make the demand for secession correct and justifiable from the
standpoint of the interests of the masses.19
The EPLF's interpretation of national self-determination was
designed to deny that Tigrayans and other Ethiopian nationalities had
the same right to independence as Eritrea, and by restricting anti-
colonial struggles to those of'multinational peoples', to deny its own
nationalities the right to independence. Moreover, while initially the
EPLF held that acceptance of the right of Eritreans to independence
was all that was necessary to join in a political—military alliance against
the Derg, as the controversy with the TPLF developed it argued that
acceptance of its interpretation of self-determination was a 'pre-
condition' for the formation of a united front of all national and
multinational organisations in Ethiopia.20
Tigrayan leaders grudgingly acknowledged that multinational
Ethiopian opposition groups were eligible for membership in a united
front against the Derg, but maintained that they should pursue their
activities in areas where no 'vanguard organisations' (such as the
TPLF) already existed to lead the people: 'Any tendency that
advocates an empire-wide multinational struggle be it from the left or
the right' did not accept the realities and implications of Amhara
domination in Ethiopia.21 The EPRP was thus accused of chauvinism
because by not acknowledging the primacy of the national contra-
diction it affirmed Amhara dominance. John Markakis came to a
similar conclusion: ' The young radicals were fighting to overthrow the
incumbent regime, not to dismantle the state, for that would have
rendered their struggle meaningless, since they were planning to use the
state apparatus to carry out a social revolution. '22

19 20
Adulis, May 1985, p. 5. Ibid. pp. 6-7.
21
'A Great Leap Forward', loc. cit. p. 7.
22
J o h n Markakis, National and Class Conflict in the Horn of Africa ( C a m b r i d g e , 1987), p . 255.

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I 14 JOHN YOUNG

Based on the conclusion that Ethiopia's primary contradiction arose

from the Amhara state's domination of the oppressed nations, the
TPLF concluded that only national movements should confront the
Derg in order to establish the nation-based federalism that would
replace the centralised state. Moreover, there was a widespread view
among both the TPLF leadership and the peasantry that only a
Tigrayan-based movement should struggle for the liberation of Tigray,
and that the other nationalities of Ethiopia ought to establish their own
fronts.
However, stretching credibility, the TPLF further argued that the
only reason why the multinational Ethiopian Peoples Democratic
Movement (EPDM), which had emerged in the province of Wollo with
TPLF support, did not operate in Tigray was ' because they have the
confidence in the democratic line of the TPLF, and also... know that
the outcome would be no different if they were to be in Tigray'. 23
Indeed, Tamrat Layne, the EPDM leader who became Prime Minister
in the Transitional Government of Ethiopia, acknowledged in 1988
that the policies and programmes of his movement largely mirrored
those of the TPLF, including its approach to national self-deter-
mination and views on the Soviet Union, China, and Albania.24 TPLF
support for the EPDM suggested there were limits to its opposition to
multinational movements when they supplemented but not challenged
its hegemony in Tigray.
Plans for a united front brought divisive concerns of foreign policy to
the fore as the TPLF fought for, and the EPLF resisted, a hard line
against the Soviet Union. The socialist bloc had initially favoured
Eritrean independence, and after the ELF began military operations
against the regime of Haile Selassie, further cemented ties with Eritrean
nationalists through diplomatic support, and indirectly through Cuban
and other allies in the Middle East, who provided the insurgents with
arms and training facilities. Although this was to change abruptly
when the socialist bloc cast its lot with the Derg, there remained a
residue of sentiment in favour of the Soviet Union within the EPLF
leadership that was to cause some dissent.25 Sympathy was due not only
to a shared affinity for Marxism and the view that Moscow's support
for the Derg was based on a policy blunder that did not reflect on the
28
' A G r e a t L e a p F o r w a r d ' , loc. cit. p . 7.
24
Interview with Tamrat Layne, Mihanse, Tigray, 2 May 1988. He became Ethiopia's Deputy
Prime Minister and Defence Minister in 1995.
25
For example, the Association of Eritrean Students and Women in North America broke from
the EPLF in August 1978 in opposition to the Front's policy with regard to the Soviet Union. See
Dan Connell, Against All Odds: a chronicle of the Eritrean revolution (Trenton, NJ, 1994), p. 169.

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 THE TIGRAY AND ERITREAN FRONTS II5

overall character of Soviet society, but also a fear of US imperialist

interests in the region, as well as the expectation that an independent
Eritrea would take its place internationally within the Soviet
dominated 'progressive' camp.
In contrast, the TPLF held the post-Stalin Soviet Union to be 'social
imperialist', and argued that along with the Derg it 'should be singled
out as the principal enemy against whom a broad alliance should be
formed'.26 According to Meles Zenawi (future chairman of the TPLF)
in 1988, 'the main dividing point between the EPLF and the TPLF'
was the issue of the Soviet Union.27 Although the latter's massive
support for the Derg would seem reason enough for condemnation, the
position taken by the leaders of the TPLF reflected the fact that they
had rarely left the Tigrayan countryside during the course of the
revolution and favoured self-reliance policies that led them to admire
Albania.
The TPLF demand that the Soviet Union be explicitly condemned
because of its alliance with the Derg, and that the EPLF drop its view
that the Soviets constituted 'strategic allies', did not go down well in
the Eritrean camp. Clearly referring to the TPLF, the EPLF central
committee held in May 1985 t h a t ' The groups that draw their swords
at the Dergue and Soviet intervention but bow to western imperialism
are precisely those whom imperialism has been sustaining, those who
still carry the smell of the overthrown autocratic regime'. 28 Parties
which held such views were not eligible for membership in its proposed
united front. It is indicative of the narrow and isolated ideological
environment in which both the TPLF and the EPLF operated that
such language, which would not have been out of place in the 1930s,
was being expressed on the eve of the collapse of the socialist bloc.
However, according to the EPLF, the immediate cause of its decision
to end ties with the TPLF in June 1985 was the belated discovery that
it was being denigrated:
the TPLF had concluded that the EPLF was not a democratic organisation
and that its relationship with the EPLF was 'tactical'. The EPLF had thought
that its cooperation with the TPLF was genuine and not based on temporary
tactical considerations. And so, when the TPLF's secret stand became public
the EPLF realised its naivete and although it did not regret its past actions,
decided to break its relationship with TPLF and not enter into polemics with
it.29
26
'A Great Leap Forward', loc. cit. p. 8.
27
Interview with Meles Zenawi, Dejene, 29 April 1988. He became Ethiopia's Prime Minister
28
in 1995. Adulis, May 1985, p. 8.
29
'EPLF Political Report and NDP', March 1987, pp. 148-9.

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I l6 JOHN YOUNG

By defining its relationship with the EPLF as ' tactical', the TPLF was
indicating that the only thing the two Fronts had in common was a
shared commitment to overthrowing the Derg. The fact that they did
not have similar positions on political or ideological concerns cast the
long-term viability of their alliance in doubt. Moreover, if the EPLF
was not regarded by Eritreans as being 'democratic', at least as
understood by Tigrayans, the TPLF had the right to enter into tactical
alliances with others who were. This was the EPLF's fear, which was
not misplaced, as in the mid-1980s the Democratic Movement for the
Liberation of Eritrea (DMLE), which opposed EPLF hegemony, was
organised in Tigray with TPLF support.30
The EPLF's decision to break with the TPLF was also due to the
existence, as already noted, of a number of areas of disagreement. But
having learnt to live with these differences for ten years in return for the
obvious benefits derived from their relationship, questions arise as to
why the EPLF ended ties with the TPLF, and why it did so in 1985.
The explanation given by the Tigrayans is that after being the senior
partner in the alliance for so long, the EPLF could not accept them as
equals. No longer the fledgling guerrilla band dependent on the EPLF,
by the mid-1980s the TPLF's growing military capacity was rapidly
approaching that of the Eritreans.
Whatever the merits of these arguments, the impact of the EPLF's
decision in 1985 to sever relations with the TPLF was immediate and
severe. Military collaboration ended, political contacts were termin-
ated, and the TPLF's radio station in Eritrea was closed down. Most
significantly, at the height of the 1984-5 famine the EPLF even refused
to allow the Relief Society of Tigray (REST) to use the main supply
link which ran from Kassala in the Sudan through Eritrea. Some
100,000 peasants were quickly mobilised by the TPLF and REST to
construct a link road from western Tigray to Gederef in the Sudan.
Following a route previously surveyed as a means to reduce dependency
on the EPLF, the TPLF was able to construct a rough track that
allowed aid convoys to resume the transport of grains, as well as
providing refugees with a more direct route to the UNHCR camps in
the Sudan. Because of this quick response probably few lives were
actually lost as a result of the EPLF's actions. However, the new road

30
At a conference in early 1990 a DMLE delegation led by its vice-chairman, Salah Ayay, met
with a delegation from the TPLF led by two Politburo members, Seyum Musa and Awalom
Wolde, and reached agreement on a set of principles. DMLE and TPLF Joint Statement, 24-31
January 1990.

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 THE TIGRAY AND ERITREAN FRONTS II7

repeatedly crossed the perennial flowing Tekezze River, and could only
be used when the waters were low.
Ultimately, however, neither the EPLF nor the TPLF would have
survived and prospered without being led by pragmatic leaders, which
the quick resolution of their conflict in April 1988 demonstrated.
Reconciliation was facilitated by the TPLF's unstinting support of the
right of Eritrea to independence even in the midst of a highly polemical
and public debate. But a rapprochement was actually achieved,
according to Meles Zenawi, because of the string of TPLF military
victories over the Derg in the towns of Tigray in early 1988.31 Indeed,
although denied by the TPLF, it is believed that one of the reasons why
these attacks were launched was to draw the EPLF's attention to its
power, and of the need to overcome their differences and form a
military alliance that would move quickly to defeat the Derg.
Three other factors also encouraged reconciliation at this time. First,
the two Fronts were mindful of the agreement recently reached
between Somalia and Ethiopia over the Ogaden. According to Sebhat
Nega, who was then the TPLF's secretary-general, this freed up to
15,000-20,000 Derg troops for deployment in the rebellious northern
provinces.32 Second, Tigray was again facing drought and would have
to import grains from the Sudan over its road link to Gederef, which
would be closed with the onset of the main season of rains that normally
began in late June. Agreement with the EPLF would provide access to
the all-weather route through Eritrea to Kassala. Lastly, although
denied in 1988, TPLF officials in 1993 acknowledged their fears that if
secret negotiations being conducted at the time between Eritreans and
Ethiopians were successful, they might have to face the full force of the
Derg virtually alone.
In April 1988 the politburos of the EPLF and the TPLF decided to
co-ordinate their struggle on the basis of common views and aims.33
These included (i) the commitment to work co-operatively to destroy
the Derg, (ii) the condemnation of the intervention of both superpowers
in the region, (iii) the recognition of the legitimacy of the Eritrean
people's struggle for independence, as well as (iv) the right of Ethiopia's
nationalities to self-determination, and (v) the need for national
and multinational opposition groups to unite in their struggle.34 The
agreement thus reflected considerable compromise on the part of both
liberation movements, as well as a considerable amount left unsaid.
31 32
Meles Zenawi, op. cit. Interview with Sebhat Nega, Wolkait, 27 April 1988.
33
People's Voice, M a y 1988, p . 8.
34
'EPLF and TPLF Joint Statement', in ibid. pp. 16-17.

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I l8 JOHN YOUNG

The decision by the EPLF to form a common front gave the TPLF
the equal recognition it wanted. Condemnation of both superpowers in
the region amounted to a retreat by the TPLF, which had focused its
wrath on the Soviet Union, as well as by the EPLF, which had directed
its ire against the West.35 The statement on self-determination was
constructed in a deliberately unclear manner, but on balance the
TPLF would appear to have ' backed down' somewhat from its earlier
stand, since no reference was made to the right of Eritrea's nationalities
to self-determination and independence. There was no explicit
recognition of the right of Ethiopia's nationalities to independence
which the TPLF had repeatedly called for, and instead the statement
gave greater weight to the place of multinational opposition forces in
the united front than the TPLF had previously been prepared to
accept.
What complicates any assessment of the agreement is that the
positions of the two Fronts have changed somewhat over time. For
example, the EPLF was less ready to defend the Soviet Union in 1988
when its days as a superpower appeared to be numbered, while the
TPLF was less insistent about the right of Ethiopian nationalities to
independence when it anticipated having enough power in the new
regime in Addis Ababa to arbitrate the outcome of demands for
national self-determination. As a journalist in Tigray at the time, it was
clear that a considerable residue of suspicion and bitterness remained.
Indeed, REST officials were only guardedly optimistic that EPLF
promises of access to their all-weather road to Kassala would be
fulfilled. Ultimately, however, the agreement demonstrated the
pragmatism of both the Eritrean and the Tigray leaders, and a
recognition of their need of each other if victory was to be achieved.

CONCLUSION

Growing peasant support for the TPLF translated into a greater role
in the war against the Derg, and this in turn led to an increasingly
critical appraisal of its former benefactor, the EPLF. Combined with
the latter's slowness in accepting the TPLF's changing status, and an
historical sense of inferiority on the part of many Tigrayans in their
relations with Eritreans, the stage was set for the break that came in

35
In the aforementioned DMLE-TPLF Joint Statement 17 months later, the two parties
agreed in January 1990 to condemn the Soviet Union, but pointedly omitted any reference to the
United States.

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 THE TIGRAY AND ERITREAN FRONTS II9

June 1985. However, the TPLF never deviated from supporting

Eritrea's right to independence, and thus kept the door open to
reconciliation.
The tensions that emerged cannot simply be attributed to EPLF's
efforts to achieve hegemony over the anti-Derg forces. The divergent
approaches of the two liberation movements to military and political
matters also grew out of the different environments in which they
operated. The Eritreans emphasised the anti-colonial aspects of their
struggle, while Tigray was part of Ethiopia and the TPLF struggled for
self-determination. And although the transformation of rural social
relations were important objectives, the TPLF confronted a society in
which secular and religious nobilities had deeper roots than in Eritrea,
where Italian colonialism had largely weakened, at least in the
highlands, various feudal elements. As a result, the Tigrayans were
particularly concerned with identifying the Amhara character of the
Ethiopian state, and therefore legitimising the right of Ethiopia's other
nationalities to self-determination.
Mention has been made of the greater access that the EPLF had to
skilled personnel and sophisticated technology, and how this encou-
raged their army's professionalism and rapid move to conventional
warfare. This process was also facilitated by the resources that the
Eritrean leaders were able to attract from the Middle East because of
their country's large Muslim population and strategic location on the
Red Sea. While the armaments, training, and finance received from the
Arab world were never decisive factors in the outcome of the war
against the Derg, the largely Christian/Marxist/Leninist TPLF could
expect little support from states in the region. As a result, the emphasis
by the Tigrayans on self-reliance and devotion to guerrilla warfare was
in part an effort to make a virtue out of necessity.
Of most lasting significance are the different approaches to national
minorities. The EPLF was not prepared to accept the notion that they
had the right to self-determination in Eritrea's highly plural society,
and its present constitutional efforts confirm this belief. By way of
contrast, the TPLF only had to consider such problems with respect to
the Afar, which it granted self-determination and a separate territorial
unit. However, as regards both Ethiopia and Eritrea it had to affirm
the same right to national self-determination that it claimed for Tigray.
And if nothing else the EPRDF-dominated regime in Addis Ababa has
been consistent in granting Ethiopia's national minorities the right to
self-determination, including independence in its 1995 federal con-
stitution.

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I2O JOHN YOUNG

It is clear that some key policies of the present Eritrean and

Ethiopian Governments can only be understood in light of positions
established in the course of their revolutionary struggles over the past
two decades. Certainly, critics who contend that the TPLF/EPRDF
blindly follows the EPLF are as mistaken as those Eritreans and their
supporters who ignore or deny the important role that the TPLF
played in overcoming their joint enemy and facilitating Eritrean
independence. In the present context, both the EPRDF in Ethiopia
and the People's Front for Justice and Democracy (PFJD) in Eritrea,
the successor to the EPLF, share many common interests, notably in
establishing workable and democratic political institutions, activating
their closely linked and moribund economies, and confronting external
threats, including the Islamic fundamentalism of the Sudan. However,
as the above analysis suggests, political differences between the TPLF
and the EPLF during their years of struggle will be reflected in their
present and future relations, and as a result they may be far more
problematic than is generally imagined.

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